Time and Time again
by a cruel winter
Summary: Set post Journey's end, working towards reunion of the Doctor and Rose, so please do not be dissuaded by the presence of original characters. This is, at the heart of it, a love story between Ten and Rose. 10/Rose, 10.2/Rose, 10/OC, OC/OC, more later
1. Old Photographs

**Chapter 1 : Old Photographs**

* * *

It seemed like no amount of upkeep was sufficient enough to discourage the growth of plant life across the face of the tombstones. Rose Tyler reached out and rubbed away the moss and grime from the headstones, and stood, wiping her hands on her jeans. She took a step back and somberly regarded the three graves in front of her.

The three people who had been most dear to her.

She came nearly every week, when her schedule permitted, and always with flowers. Despite being her name sake, she never left roses at the graves, they were too somber, too impersonal, regardless of their loveliness, for her loved ones who lay beneath the ground.

Lilies for Jackie, daisies for Pete, but for the headstone she grieved over the most after all these years, the one engraved with the false name of 'John Smith', she always left sunflowers.

break

He had told her, on that cold day with the spray of salt water biting against their cheeks, that he had only one heart, only one life, and that he would gladly share it with her. He had told her that he loved her, with the face and voice of the man who she had loved for years, while the original had shied away from even confirming that before he left her for the last time.

Left her with her heart uncertain as to whether it would burst from the joy of this new man, who was, in a fashion, _her _Doctor. This new man who freely shared his affection with her, and was unafraid to hold her and kiss her in front of the whole world, consequences be damned.

Or whether it was in fact bursting with the earth shattering pain of losing the love of her life all over again. After she had come so far to find him, struggling through the coarse fabrics of alternate dimensions to find her way back to him, the only man she had ever truly loved with ever fiber of her being.

He had known this, known that she had risked her everything to find him, and he had still made up his mind for the both of them. He always thought he knew what was best for his Rose. He assumed that what she had wanted was a human life, and he could give her what she wanted by sending her away with the regeneration of him and Donna.

The pain in his eyes as he told her his decision had been almost unbearable, and Rose had wanted to grab onto him, to shake him, to scream "I DON'T WANT A NORMAL LIFE! I WANT YOU, YOU STUPID MAN! YOU!!" …

And he hadn't known about Rose's condition then, and how could he when even Rose had only the smallest suspicion of it?

* * *

Rose stepped from her shower and wrapped herself in a towel. Examining her face in the mirror she found nothing out of the ordinary, no hint of wrinkles, no laugh lines, nor even a gray hair, sure, she thought, her roots could do with a touch up, but otherwise nothing was amiss. She looked almost exactly as she had at twenty years old, and no one who she randomly met on the street was any for the wiser.

Looking in her mirror she recalled past birthdays.

"Love, you must tell me what sort of moisturizers you have been using!" Jackie had exclaimed, rising from the couch to greet her daughter as Rose entered the living room and her birthday party. Rose had smiled indulgently, trying to quell the guilty feelings she experienced whenever anyone mentioned her youthful looks.

The man who, according to all legal documentation, was now known as "John Smith", who she still could only call "Doctor", had taken Rose's hand, drawing her attention back to him.

The "new" Doctor, the "human" Doctor, at that point she had learned to love him nearly as much as she had her Doctor years and years ago.

It had been long ago that she had married him on a drizzly May afternoon. Unlike his wife, there were lines at the corners of his eyes now, and his hair was more grey then brown anymore.

By all appearances she had been the youngest person present at her birthday party. Even her younger brother Tony and his wife looked older then her, despite being basically old enough to be their mother.

One of the maids on Pete and Jackie's house staff had wheeled out the birthday cake, with fifty five candles blazing atop it.

And no one spoke a word of the fact that Rose had not aged at all.

He had promised to grow old along side her, to spend his whole life with her. And he had been true to his word. They had been married for sixty two years, that horrible September night she remembered like yesterday.

Old, feeble, and bedridden, he had clutched onto the smooth young hands of his unchanging wife. He had laughed weakly and reminded her of the time he had told her, after she had first met Sarah Jane Smith all those years ago, about how painful it was to grow attached to his human companions, only to watch them wither and die and grow old.

"I never wished that pain on you Rose." he told her, and then looking her in the eye he said "This is not your fault, I thought I had taken it all from you, I never imagined this would happen to you."

"What would happen to me? Doctor? What am I? It was supposed to be different. We were going to get old together! How could this happen?" she had cried, burying her face against the back of his wrinkled hand, still gripped in hers, and he had stroked her hair and told her that she would understand one day.

She would know one day.

Un-aging and eternal.

And alone.

The taste of immortality had grown sour in Rose's mouth long, long ago.

Though she was regarded as an anomaly, her job at Torchwood sustained her.

Team mates of hers came and went, some were killed, some grew old and died that way. Not her though, not Rose, she stayed the same, and after awhile she grew less and less inclined towards socialization with other members of Torchwood.

Everyone left. They always left.

She was Two Hundred and Thirty Eight years old, in a Twenty year old's body.

And she was bloody tired.

* * *

Rose woke with a jolt to the sound of her communication system buzzing. She rubbed her eyes and pushed her unkempt hair from her face, rolled onto her stomach and picked up the small device.

"-nnnn?" she managed in her sleep deprived state.

"Rose? I'm so sorry that I woke you, but the rift has become active again." said the quiet Welsh voice on the other end of the phone.

She groaned.

"all right, I'll be there as soon as I can"

* * *

Rose arrived at Torchwood, Cardiff dressed in a sweater and jeans with her hair pulled up into a messy pony tail. Stepping through the entrance to the hub, she rubbed at her bleary eyes and was greeted by the familiar smell of freshly brewed coffee.

She smiled sleepily at the man standing in front of her. He was decent height, with medium brown hair and dark blue eyes, despite the early morning meeting he was freshly shaved and dressed in a pressed charcoal colored suit. And he was holding a dark pink mug of coffee out to her, prepared exactly the way she liked it.

" 'morning Celyn" she said.

Celyn Hathaway had long ago been dubbed the resident encyclopedia of the team, he had knowledge of things that never failed to make his team members more then slightly dumb founded. He also made the best coffee, and everyone had assumed for years that he had more then a small crush on Rose.

"Sorry to wake you 'mum, but I thought you'd want to know…" he looked uncomfortable, it was an endearing quality of his, that and his occasional surprising and dry sense of humor.

"I's all right" Rose told him waving her hand vaguely and taking the mug from him as she walked up the short flight of stairs to the core of the room where the other two members of her team were seated. Taking a sip of her coffee she moved to stand behind them, a pretty girl in her mid twenties with brown eyes and auburn hair pulled up into a bun with a pencil, wearing a lab coat over a dark purple dress with low heeled black shoes and a sandy blonde haired, light blue-eyed boy slightly older then the girl in the lab coat, dressed in jeans, black trainers and a grey hoodie.

The girl, Delia Llewellyn, was the medical and forensics expert, she had graduated medical school in her early twenties and could practically be considered a genius in the field of medicine.

The boy, Hayden Merrick was their technology man, there was nothing computer chip or electronically operated that he couldn't find his way into, he had been hand picked into Torchwood after the apparent ease with which he had hacked into their data base, and he had been dating Delia for coming up on two years. The two were inseparable, but never let it interfere with their jobs, so Rose was unbothered by their involvement, especially since they handled their relationship quite professionally, the only indications being small things like how she had stood behind Hayden with her hands resting on his shoulders while he peered at his multiple computer screens.

"Ah! Fearless leader!" Hayden exclaimed by way of greeting as he saw Rose approach, Delia simply smiled at her, in contrast to her boyfriend the medic was much more reserved. "How much did Celyn tell you on the phone, love?". Rose set her mug on Hayden's desk and leaned over the screens.

"None of the gory details, how bad are we talking?" she asked.

"At the moment? Not so severe, we've only had two cases …" he tapped a few keys and pulled up two police report files on the middle monitor. "Agnes Parker, age 17, disappears from the Cardiff Bay Barrage at 11:15 PM last night … she was on CTV footage one moment, the next nothing…. Around 2:30 AM police picked up a man in his early thirties from the same location, in a state of near shock, no identification on him. The opposite case with the footage on him, one moment the place is completely quiet, the next big flash of light and WAM! Meet John Doe."

"But why is it getting active now?" Rose murmured rubbing at her eyes again, "There haven't been any disappearances or … err… appearances ….due to the rift in over one hundred years. Why now? It's just been quiet little spurts of energy leakage …. What triggered it?" Hayden swiveled in his chair to face her.

"I'm glad you asked that Ms. Tyler! … we have no idea." her shoulders drooped, and Delia lightly shoved Hayden and whispered to not be cruel.

"Just a suggestion …." everyone turned, slightly stunned to see that Celyn had spoken. "But what if we went through previous Torchwood records of when there were the highest amounts of rift activity, and try to determine what events were happening at that time and maybe that would give us an idea…?" Rose nodded.

"No… that is a quite good idea, it's going to take awhile though, we have centuries of records here … Hayden, you and Delia wrack through the computer databases for information, me and Celyn can go through the old paper archives… after he makes some more coffee… this is going to take bloody forever."


	2. I love her, but she's not you

Chapter 2 : I love her, but she's not you

The Doctor sniffed and brought his hand up to rub the back of his neck as he examined the controls of the TARDIS.

"We're going to need to make a pit-stop … she needs to fuel up and Weeeell ….. Are you painting your nails AGAIN?" The girl seated a few feet back and to his right blinked and looked up at him.

"…yes…?"

"You'd think they didn't have nail enamel in your century or something" he said raising his eyebrow at her. She rolled her eyes.

"They don't, remember? Stopped manufacturing it about eighty years before I was born …. You told me that first time we went to the twentieth century… 'what's this?' 'it's nail polish' 'what's that?' 'makes your nails…. Colored… different' 'never heard of it' ' 'course you haven't, they stopped making it about eighty years before you were born'"

He furrowed his brow at her.

"You are a humorless child, and that was no where near and accurate impersonation of me." she grinned at that.

"And YOU are a dirty old man with a penchant for blondes" she countered before returning to painting her nails a shade of electric blue. The Doctor shrugged, it wasn't a point that he could really argue with.

"We're going to be landing in Cardiff in about ten minutes, go get changed." she looked hurt at that.

"What? Why? It's pretty! And she picked it out for me!" she retorted inclining her head towards the TARDIS console, the ship in turn made a low humming noise as if in agreement.

"Yes, she has wonderful taste as usual, and you look great, but the last time we landed somewhere and you sauntered out in a get up like that they thought you were some sort of foreign royalty and we spent the whole time dodging paparazzi and not getting anything done."

She sighed and got up, and his eyes followed her as she exited the room in a whisper of taffeta and petticoats.

BREAK

It had been four years ago, but at times it seemed like this whole insane thing had begun yesterday, and in truth, being a Time Lord, four years was hardly more then a blink of the eye for him.

But he could clearly remember that cold 23rd century night, tearing down a back alley, with the sound of his trainers smacking against the wet asphalt, and his trench beating against him as he raced through the rain and hail with an enraged Usurian in close pursuit.

He had ducked just in time, the sizzling ray from a sonic blaster connecting with a wall that had been at precisely his head level. He was more nimble then the Usurian, however, and had managed to quickly turn. He spotted a smallish diner, decorated in vintage 1950's style and had raced towards the lights of the establishment with abandon.

The dinner-goers jumped as he banged through the synthesized chrome doors, with the Usurian clanging clumsily through a mere few seconds later. En route to the back door of the diner, the Doctor's shoe had caught on the edge of a chair as he had attempted to vault over it, sending him crashing to the floor and landing on his side with a resounding thud.

He tried to form a cohesive sentence as he scooted backwards from the winded, perturbed, Usurian who was taking aim at him with the sonic blaster now.

And then it had crumpled, sonic blaster clattering to the floor a few centimeters from the Doctor's feet, and he had looked up then, and seen her. Standing over the fallen alien, serving tray still raised slightly above her head.

And he hadn't stopped to think or rationalize beyond the fact that Usurians were strong, and hitting one over the head with a serving tray would only stun one for a few moments. Clambering to his feet he had firmly grabbed the girl's wrist and hissed "RUN!" between his clenched teeth, dragging her along behind him as he resumed his escape pattern.

She was quick, he gave her that, she easily kept up with him, and hadn't even stopped him to question being pulled after him down the twists and winds of the wet alley ways as the elements continued to relentlessly pelt down on them.

He could feel his two hearts thundering inside his rib cage as he finally stopped crouching low behind a dumpster. Only then did he actually really look at the girl who had saved his life, who he in turn had yanked along into the fierce rain and hail.

Thin, really quite thin, which was an interesting observation out of him, though he couldn't tell exactly from their current position but he guessed her to be just a bit shorter then average height. Her honey blonde hair had been pulled up into a pony-tail that was now soaking wet and sticking to her neck and shoulder blades, and her eyes were a light green squinting at him through the precipitation. She was wearing the pink semi-short skirted uniform with white waist apron he had briefly noticed the waitresses of the diner wearing, along with a pair of off-white high top trainers much like his own.

And she was rather attractive, not in the remarkable curvaceous beauty Rose had had, but more in a waif-like magazine model fashion. If they even had magazines in this century… he couldn't remember.

And she was staring at him, which was likely just as much on account of his scrutiny of her as of the events that just transpired. He cleared his throat.

"Right… sorry… don't think I caught your name."

"Moira, Moira Brennan." he broke into a huge grin at the sound of her soft accent.

"Oh you're Irish, that's brilliant! I love the Irish!" she stared at him incredulously.

"Wot?"

"Oh … you're right, not really the time …. Sorry" he said regaining him composure.

"DOCTOR!!" the Usurian roared in the distance and Moira made a small huffing noise.

"It's not as if I hit him that hard." the Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"The way he's yelling for a doctor…. I didn't even hit him that hard.." He grinned again.

"That's funny."

"What's funny?"

"You made a joke just now." She blinked.

"I did?" He face palmed.

"Oh you didn't, you're right, I'm sorry, I'M the Doctor."

"Doctor of what?"

"No, that's just me, I'm THE Doctor. That's my name, just the Doctor." Moira's eyebrow quirked.

"Your parents had an even worse sense of humor then mine."

"DOCTOR!" the insistent yell was closer now and the Doctor grabbed Moira's arm, surprising her with the sudden movement.

"We need to find somewhere to hide, sooner the better, he's quite perturbed with me I'm afraid… and I can't go back to my ship until he's off my tail, I mean, he'd expect that right? So where do we go? If I were an enraged Usurian tracking me where would I never guess to look?"

"My flat" she said bluntly, and then flushed at the look he gave her. "I mean, we don't know each other, and it-"

"he"

"-he certainly doesn't know me or where I live, so my flat should be a safe place to wait it out." The Doctor grinned with near manic glee and kissed her forehead.

"You're BRILLIANT you are!" he exclaimed clambering to his feet and dragging her up along with him. "Now, which way?"

BREAK

Her flat was tiny, microscopic even. A single room that was combined into bedroom, living room, and kitchenette, and a small bathroom. He had been in motel rooms far larger. In the dim artificial light of the apartment it was even more apparent how thin Moira was, with her soaked uniform adhered to her skin, that coupled with the starkness of her living conditions, the only furniture being a small bed with a tiny table next to it topped with two picture frames, made him feel slightly embarrassed to be scrutinizing his surroundings.

Apparently, all the clothing the girl owned was hanging next to her bed, and half of that was encompassed by a second one identical to the one she was wearing and two similar ones in blue. And only one other pair of shoes, in all his years of traveling he'd never met a girl that only owned two pairs of shoes before.

Trying not to embarrass this girl who had put herself on the line for him, a complete stranger, twice within the past hour, he turned his attention to the two pictures.

One was Moira, perhaps a few years younger, with a small smile on her face, a boy around her age with black hair and blue eyes had an arm around her shoulders and was grinning from ear to ear. The second picture was three people, obviously siblings, the boy looked to be maybe sixteen and was dressed in a military uniform, next to him stood a girl who couldn't be any older then twelve or thirteen, with a toddler girl in her arms. All three had the same honey blonde hair and green eyes.

He picked up the picture of the siblings and examined it more closely.

"Is this your family?" Moira paused in tugging off her wet trainers.

"Yeh, about eight years ago anyway."

"Why aren't you with them instead of out here … where is this again?" She gave him a strange look.

"New Winchester."

"WHAT? New Winchester? What happened to the old one?" her expression still stayed incredulously.

"It was flattened…. In the great war… along with four other cities in the surrounding area." The Doctor ruffled his hair and looked thoughtful.

"And when you say the great war you mean….?"

"Are you serious?"

"I'm afraid so."

"The great war? The war between Earth and the Mars colony?" He shifted on the balls of his feet.

"Weeeell…. You know, when you're as old as I am you've seen so many wars it's hard to keep them straight." She laughed at that.

"And how old is that exactly?"

"One thousand one hundred and forty." she laughed harder before noticing the look in his eyes.

"oh… oh my God, you aren't joking …. Wow." she leaned back against the wall and stared at him with scrutiny, as the Doctor took a deep breath, seating himself on the edge of her bed and told her, the abbreviated version of who he was. About being a Time Lord from Gallifrey, about the TARDIS, and the time war, and how it had been eighty years since he had traveled with anyone.

"And now, you have to answer something for me." He said solemnly, and she nodded. "What are the blue ones for?" he asked reaching behind him and swatting at the blue uniforms hanging by the bed.

"The other restaurant I work at… you know, even shit holes like this have rent due each month." She sighed, sitting next to him. "Breakfast shift at Moxx's and dinner at Stella's … the place you so gracefully waltzed through. Oh God….." she dropped her head into her hands "I'm going to be sacked!" The Doctor quirked an eyebrow at her.

"What? Why?"

"Well, hitting someone over the head and then running away with a complete stranger in the middle of your shift isn't exactly good work ethics, now is it? God… I guess tomorrow I'll have to go in and see if I can beg for it back."

The Doctor glanced once more around her flat.

"Well that's one option…" he said, she looked up at him.

"There's another one?"

"You could come with me, in my ship … I mean… you wouldn't need to bring anything, she sort of… takes care of things." Moira looked at him incredulously.

"You … want… me to come with you." He grinned.

"I'd love you to."

BREAK

"It's beautiful!!" Moira gasped, standing by the TARDIS console.

"She…" the Doctor said, Moira turned and looked at him questioningly "The TARDIS is alive, and she's a she." Moira smiled brightly for the first time.

"That's amazing!" She placed a tentative hand on one of the controllers "And you travel around in her? My God, that's brilliant! I love it! I love this ship!" The TARDIS made a slight mechanical purring noise in response to Moira's exclamations.

"You'd think you'd never seen a space ship before." he said, smiling himself at her reactions, this girl was like a small child in the middle of a toy store who had just been told she could pick whichever one she wanted.

"Well I haven't, never been anywhere but Galway and New Winchester… I can stay here? Really?"

"I'm not about to tell you that you can and then kick you out the door in front of the Hun army." Her eyes were wide and questioning. "… did I not mention that it also travels in time?" She squeaked and quickly covered her mouth with her hands, and he couldn't help grinning, he couldn't remember the last time he had traveled with someone so excitable. "You think that's great, you should see the wardrobe."

"Wardrobe?" she whispered.

"Oh yes! Any fashion, any size, I said my ship had whatever you could want." She was staring with him with her mouth open now. "Go on then, go pick something out! I'm tired of looking at your soggy waitress getup."

Moira leapt forward and hugged him, the force of it causing him to stagger back slightly, before she ran in the direction he had indicated, and he found himself laughing in response to her enthusiasm.

BREAK

It was difficult not to compare her, he couldn't help it. He had managed to remain strictly platonic in regards to his feelings with each companion that he had since Rose. But the instant he had allowed himself to begin to feel affection at all beyond friendship towards Moira he had trouble not starting to tally the differences between her and Rose.

Rose laughed loudly, appreciatively, and often where Moira seldom did, and when she did it was more of a quiet, stifled giggle. Rose's features had been soft and seductive, with her voluptuous lips and large dark eyes, in stark comparison to Moira's small kitten-ish features and green eyes.

He felt guilty with each time he felt a surge of emotion for Moira that was immediately followed by the thought But she isn't Rose…

The TARDIS was fond of her, however, and that always managed to more or less put him at ease, even though he found himself often standing in front of the consol and telling the ship in a low voice the Moira was a person and not the TARDIS's doll to dress and play with. As it had started leaving clothing out for Moira every morning since the first time she had staggered into the wardrobe crooning with adoration of all the beautiful things she found there. Things she could never have afforded, and the TARDIS was obviously flattered by her attention and repaid her as best she could.

So in opposition to Rose's more casual, action-friendly mode of dressing, Moira was often clothed in dresses and attractive, though less then practical shoes.

Though, to her credit, she still managed to keep up with him when running was required.

And despite her small frame Moira ate like a horse.

The day he met her he had taken her to twenty-first century London for Fish and chips after she had changed out of her soggy uniform. She had devoured her entire portion while he was still picking at his fish. In amazement he had simply sat and stared at her, and she had looked up sheepishly before asking. "You going to finish that?" he had shaken his head, and then watched her devour his portion as well.

"When was the last time you ate?"

"Three days ago."

"What? Why?"

"Couldn't afford rent and food."

But even after months of traveling with the Doctor, and the threat of starvation long since passed she still managed to put away more then most people he had known, and he had often found himself wondering how on earth she stayed so trim. Sure, there was a lot of running in their life, but not nearly enough to counteract all of that.

Needless to say the differences were staggering.

Which he often was grateful for, on the occasions where it allowed him a brief reprieve from his constant thoughts of Rose.

His Rose who would have been dead for over a hundred years now.

He never spoke to Moira of Rose when he talked of his past, he had plenty of stories that he relayed to her mostly about Martha and Donna, the stories of Donna Moira always enjoyed the most, and he determined that the slightly motherly side of Donna would have adored Moira had she ever met her.

He had also determined that his Fourth self would have loved her, with her enthusiasm for every new thing she encountered, that was so like his own had been in that life.

She never pried into his past with Rose, but in return she was tight lipped about her past as well, having revealed little to him aside from the names of her brother and sister that he had seen in the photograph.

There was a tangible level between them of things that would not be discussed, and they both accepted, and were comfortable with this.

BREAK

When they had been traveling together for half a year he had taken her to Times Square, New York on New Year's Eve 1999. And he had watched her expression of wonder, her cheeks flushed from the cold, huddling into her coat as the ball descended toward the unlit "2000".

As the crowd had exploded in joy at the stroke of midnight, with strains of "auld lang syne" being sung around them, she had raised up on the balls of her feet and touched a light kiss against his lips.

And he had recoiled from her violently, taking a large step backwards.

"WHAT?!" he had said shrilly, and Moira looked hurt and confused, and was shaking her head.

"I … just… it's New Year's … it's tradition.. I…" his expression didn't change, he continued to look at her with the kind of appalled shock usually reserved for when you have been slapped for something that you never did.

They stood in silence, in the cold and the snow before he turned away saying.

"I'm going to go get something to drink, you want anything?"

She didn't answer him, and when he returned to where he had last seen her she was nowhere amongst the throbbing crowd.

And when he returned to the TARDIS the door to her room was shut, and he felt a sinking feeling of dread low in his stomach that he had managed to drive her away. That when she finally emerged, it would be to ask him to let her go.

And he regretted the way he had panicked, and pulled away from her like she was poisonous, he regretted that the moment he was confronted with his guilty feelings for this latest companion he had shoved her away from him instead of confronting his emotions.

BREAK

The next morning he had stood hesitantly outside her room, before tapping lightly on her door. He heard her invitation to enter, quiet though it was, and found her sitting on her bed, once more in that pink waitressing uniform, tying the laces of her old off white trainers.

And the queasy feeling returned to his stomach.

"You're leaving?" Moira didn't meet his eyes.

"I thought you wanted me to."

The Doctor sighed and sat down next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

"I don't want you to leave, look I even got you a present" he said, reaching into his coat pocket with his free hand, holding in front of her a silver chain at the end of which was a small pendant - a disc of green stone set into a silver backing, smaller engraved silver circles decorated the face of the stone. Moira stared at it in bewilderment as he pooled the chain onto her open palm.

"It's lovely." she said quietly.

"I'm sorry." he told her, and she nodded, but still didn't look up at him, the Doctor sighed, stretching out his legs.

And then he told her everything.

About meeting Rose in his ninth life, about how quickly he fell in love with her, how she had absorbed the entire vortex of time just to save him. He told her about werewolves and cyber men, about Canary Wharf and losing her inside the dimensional Rift. About Rose finding him again, pulling her way through dimensions to get to him, his ordinary - extraordinary girl, and about eventually losing her to a man who was him, but not him, and how it had been his choice and his fault, and every day of his life he regretted that choice.

When he finished she was staring at him, not with pity, but with understanding. And maybe they were more alike then he had originally thought. He cleared his throat.

"Fancy being my date for a wedding?" His sudden shift from being somber to once again cheerful made her start slightly.

"Wha-?" He stood up and looked down at her.

"Friend of mine, she was brilliant, invited me to her wedding … centuries ago actually, never went though… Always felt a bit bad about that… Fancy going?"

BREAK

He had been pleased when she had emerged, dressed in pale yellow with white high heels, the pendant lying complimentarily against her collar bone.

The ceremony had been beautiful, and he had smiled at the evident happiness of his former companion.

At the reception he had finally caught up with the bride, and with a wide grin had gathered her into his arms in a joyful hug.

"Miss Martha Jones!" he exclaimed, and she laughed pulling out of his embrace.

"Now now, it's Martha Milligan now, I didn't think you'd come" She glanced over his shoulder into the guests milling about the buffet table. "Who's that you've come with then? Where's Rose?" The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably and Martha's features settled into a look of exasperation. "Oh now what happened? It's not even been six months since you two found each other, what is this now?"

"She's gone." He said quietly. Martha looked ready to slap him "Martha… it's been over two hundred years since the last time that I saw you." She opened and closed her mouth a few times before uttering.

"Oh…. I see… so who is the blonde you came with? She's quite pretty. Little skinny, but you know."

"That's Moira, she saved my life, you'd like her." Martha peered at him.

"And how do you feel about her?" she was scrutinizing him, and he had no idea how to react under the intensity of it.

"What do you…"

"You love her." She said incredulously. And he sighed heavily.

"I do… but not the way that I loved Rose. And I can't. I can never love her as much as I loved Rose. And I know that isn't fair, and I wish I could just forget her, but I can't."

Martha's look had softened into one of sympathy.

"Doctor, I realized a long time ago that you would never love me, or anyone like Rose. You and Rose, that was something else. No one else can ever be Rose again, and it's not fair to you, and especially not to Moira, to expect her to someone else for you." He nodded morosely, turning to scan the crowd for Moira.

His eyes found her, with an expression akin to a deer caught in the headlights, with a chocolate biscuit in her mouth and her cheeks thoroughly flushed. A familiar looking man, with dark hair, blue eyes, and an overly charming smile was staring intently at Moira as he dropped a light kiss on the top of her right hand held lightly between his two much larger ones.

The Doctor frowned.

"Pardon me Martha, I need to go rescue my date - OI! JACK! STOP THAT!"

BREAK

After the wedding he walked with her on the beach, holding her left hand tightly in his own, while she loosely held her discarded shoes in her right. And with the sun setting over the 21st century English coast line, Moira had taken a deep breath and finally confessed her past to him.

About growing up in Ireland during the depression that had followed the aftermath of the fourth World War. Her brother Aidan joining the military, and leaving home at sixteen to fight in the great war. Moira's family sinking even further into poverty after her brother's death and the government's checks no longer coming in, her parents both working full time and still not making enough money to support her and her younger sister, Sophie. She left home herself at fifteen and went to live in one of the government funded educational housings. Where she had met Ethan Fitzpatrick, the dark haired boy from her picture. They had fallen in love and dated until he turned eighteen and was drafted into the war. She received the letter that he had been killed the day before her eighteenth birthday. A month later she was considered old enough to leave government housing and moved to England with little more then the clothing on her back. She did odd jobs here and there, not landing the waitressing jobs she had when he met her until the year after the war ended, and she had been living much the same for the two years until she met him.

And then there were no secrets anymore.

And with the moonlight casting silver shadows on both of them he kissed her for the first time.

And tried not to tell himself not to just because she wasn't Rose.

BREAK

That had all been about three and a half years ago, and it had seemed more or less natural when they had soon afterwards begun sharing a room, and even more natural that physical intimacy followed once they had cleared that air about their respective pasts.

And now he stood in his TARDIS, more or less content, or as close to as he had been since losing Rose.

Moira re-entered the room in a swish of green skirts and click of high heeled shoes, she had worn the pendant every minute of every day since he had bought it for her as an apology. And she smiled as she came to stand next to him, placing a light kiss on his cheek.

He smiled back, offering her his arm.

"Well then, Cardiff, shall we?" she nodded, and placed her hand on his forearm as they stepped out into the 23rd century sunlight.


	3. Rift Activity

**Chapter 3: Rift Activity**

* * *

"Rose…? Rose…?"

She woke with a slight jolt, feeling a pain in her right cheek. She blinked her bleary eyes and attempted to adjust to her surroundings.

Desk, files, books, papers… head on desk…. Head on book on desk. She groaned.

She began to realize that she had fallen asleep at the hub, attractively face first on the old ledger she had been studying, the bottom of the book's cover was digging into the side of her face, and as she raised her head, she reached a hand up and traced the deep impression it had left.

"Rose, did you stay here all night?" She rubbed her eyes and squinted at Celyn.

"Looks like."

"Coffee?"

"You're beautiful" she said appreciatively taking the cup. "Has anyone found anything yet?"

"Hayden managed to pull up a few things in the electronic data base, we don't have much to go on at the moment, but as far as we can currently tell the last time the rift was overly active was in the early 21st century." She nodded, and then blinked and studied him closer.

"Celyn … you changed your clothes… and shaved…"

"Yes 'mum" she sighed, and here she was, wearing the same clothes, no doubt with morning breath and who knew what state her hair might be in.

"Right, just confirming."

She stood up, trying to catch her reflection in the window of her office. Her hair wasn't so bad after all.

"Celyn, I want you to take Delia and try to see if you can get into see the John Doe, her medical credentials should be enough to get her in to examine him, and maybe she can get some information out of him, see where he's from and all … if she can get anything out of him I'm going to need you to record it, no matter how insignificant it might sound, anything could help."

"Hey boss, can you come her a 'mo?" Hayden called, and Rose sighed, tugging her hair back into a low pony tail as she walked down the steps to central room.

Hayden was staring intently at the middle one of his monitors, which currently displayed what appeared to be static with an occasional ripple of yellow light running through it.

"What've you got?" She asked when she reached his desk, pulling up a chair to sit next to him.

"Well…." Hayden said, stretching "It's quite interesting, you see I've created a program that reads the rift energy and bounces it to us in a visual form. I was looking for fluctuations in the amount of actual energy being given off by the rift. And that's when I saw the flashes…." another faint ripple of yellow broke through the static. Rose blinked.

"What is that?"

"That's where it get spooky … the yellow is an indication filter that I incorporated in to scan for alien tech. Normally it would illuminate an entire area of the screen if there was, say a space ship in our relative area, but see how it's only just the slightest bit behind all the static?" She nodded.

"Sure, but what does that mean?"

"It means that it's detecting alien tech, but it's picking up its signals from _the other side_ of the rift." There was a moment of silence with the last statement almost visibly hanging in the air between them.

"But that's impossible…" she said finally. "Isn't it..?"

* * *

The Doctor stopped in his tracks with a startled expression before turning to his companion.

"Did you feel that?" Moira looked up at him quizzically.

"Feel what?"

"Just now … it was like there was a … hiccup or something in the fabric of time."

Moira shook her head and he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "That definitely wasn't normal…. But what could be causing it? What would be strong enough to actually make time and space itself pucker?" he glanced back at Moira who looked gob smacked.

"Oh God… you were actually expecting me to be able to answer that?" She almost squeaked.

"No no no, of course not, you know me, like to hear myself talk… they used to have this little ice cream shop around here … do you still have ice cream? I could go for an ice cream…"

"Doctor…" Moira said quietly, noticing the strain in his cheerfulness. "Is this serious? Is something wrong here?" He took a deep breath and looked down at her.

"The thing is Moira… when there's, wrinkles, as it were, in the fabric of time. Things have a tendency to get misplaced. Things… and people, that are either supposed to or not supposed exist in a certain time and place get moved elsewhere… and that's never, ever good. You see, that happens and important events don't happen, people aren't born… I mean… it might be nothing… but it might be…"

"Horrible?"

"Yeah." He said, and then glanced over at Moira, taking in her wide-eyed stare. "Ah! It's probably nothing! Don't look so scared! Come here you!" He grinned and pulled her into an embrace. With his cheek resting against the top of Moira's head he allowed his features to fall once more into a look of worry, but he made sure that his artificial cheer was firmly back in place by the time the small blonde pulled back enough to look up at him.

Giving her a final squeeze, he slipped his hand from her waist to capture her hand in his, pulling gently in an indication that she ought to resume walking. She did and he smiled down at her.

"After this pit stop I'll take you somewhere fun, I promise." He told her in response to her worried expression. "Anywhere you like. Where do you fancy? Chicago in the 1920's? Meet the Gangsters? Go back to the seventies and see if we can get into a Sex Pistols gig? I can take you to Versailles if you like, dress you up like Cinderella, even get you glass shoes… though that might prove a bit dangerous … now that I think about it." He was greeted by her smile and her head on his shoulder and he hoped his quick words had been enough that he was the only one still worried.

BREAK

Rose's communication device buzzed angrily from her desk, and she answered it before it vibrated clean onto the floor.

"Yes?"

"Rose." Said Celyn's voice on the other end. "Delia is still in the examination room with our mystery man, but I thought I should get a hold of you since I've managed to find out a bit myself."

"All right, what've you got?" She asked, in the background she could hear a slight shuffling, like papers being arranged before Celyn spoke again.

"According to our John Doe, he's actually Benjamin Cook of Cardiff Bay, wife Laura, and two children Sam and Ian… But here's the twist. There already is a Benjamin Cook of Cardiff Bay."

"Celyn, surely Benjamin Cook is a common enough name…" She said, feeling slightly exasperated.

"No Rose, I don't mean there is someone with the same name, there already is a _Benjamin Cook. _The same face, the same man, except our resident Benjamin Cook is a bachelor, no wife Laura … but when Laura was researched under her maiden name, she exists too … only she's Laura Sheffield, she got married and moved to Whitechapel about three years ago. But when he was shown her picture, he swears that she's his Laura."

That got Rose's attention.

"So it's like this is another universe's version of our Benjamin Cook…" She said slowly, a strange feeling pooling in the pit of her stomach.

"If he's to be believed, yes … though I suppose… He does look exactly like this other man and all… anyway, I thought it best to let you know our findings, in case it was any help to what you and Hayden were doing."

"You're a doll Celyn, you and Delia get back here as soon as you can, I'll see if I can get us in a pizza." She told him before clicking the device off.

"OI ROSE!" Hayden yelled from the other room, and she hurried back to his desk.

"Yeh?" He was frowning at the middle computer monitor again, the centered static and flashes of light was still onscreen, but in a smaller window he was rapidly typing in a long strings of numbers and calculations.

"If the new program I've been running through our base indicator here is right … the rift is going to become wildly active again within the next two hours." She made a low whistling noise.

"Not any chance that you could narrow that down a bit could you? Couldn't say something like half three could you?" Hayden shook his head apologetically.

"Wish I could boss, but that's the best I can get out of it right now, won't have any clearer of an idea until the rift is actually opened up again… But, we do know where the majority of the activity takes place, so we could quarantine off the Barrage for the next two hours or so. That'll at least keep anything from our side from getting pulled through, and if something comes to us from the other end we'll be able to get to whoever or whatever it is before the fuzz gets a chance to monkey it up." Rose nodded.

"All right, I'll go see about getting the bridge closed off. Get a hold of Celyn and Delia if you can, and tell them to head over there as soon as they're finished. I want you here monitoring the activity and giving us updates.. And tell them I'm sorry but we're going to have to do the whole pizza thing later." She told him apologetically as she shrugged into a coat and headed out of the hub.

* * *

The Doctor swirled his cone of vanilla ice cream against his tongue, and glanced over at Moira, who was licking escaped droplets of her ice cream off of her palm. He laughed and planted a slightly sticky kiss against her cheek.

"See, now aren't you glad that I found us ice cream? I can't believe you've never had it before, you must be the most deprived child I have ever known. It boggles the mind to wonder what else you might not have had." She smiled behind her ice cream.

"I bet you'd like to know." He nudged her arm playfully as they strolled across the barrage.

"No, I already know all about that, you terrible girl, I was just talking about food." He was rewarded with one of her quiet, infrequent laughs.

He felt a twinge in his head, a slight one, coupled with a slight feeling somewhat akin to motion sickness.

Time was shifting again. More violently then he had last sensed. He felt like the very universe itself was seizing around him.

"Doctor?? Doctor what is it? Is it that wrinkling thing or whatever again?" Moira asked gripping onto his arm. The feeling ebbed and he managed to shake his head and force a smile.

"No, no, was just eating my ice cream to fast is all. Honestly Moira, you're going to give yourself an aneurysm if you don't stop letting every little thing worry you."

She didn't look convinced, but she stopped arguing these things with him long ago, and instead looked out over the water. She stopped.

"Doctor, did you see that?" He followed the line of her arm, not seeing what she was pointing at.

"What?"

"There was this little flash of light… almost like a sparkle… just over the water." He shook his head. But the twinge was coming back, more then a twinge now, it was a throbbing pain. He closed his eyes against the staggering pain in his head.

He could hear the click of her high heeled shoes as she walked to the railing. The ground underneath him felt like it was tearing at itself.

"There is was again!" He heard her say, but when he opened his eyes to look at her there seemed to be a light haloing her, and it was growing steadily brighter as the fabric of time throbbed harder around him.

"MOIRA!!" He yelled stretching his hand out to his companion, and she whirled to face him, the light becoming so bright that it was blinding. So bright he couldn't see anything, not Moira, not the barrage…

"DOCTOR?!" Moira screamed, sounding surprised, alarmed, and still completely hidden from his vision as he clutched his head in the overwhelming pain.

Then all at once the pain was gone, and the ground was still once more, and the light dissipated.

And there was nothing at all where she had been standing only a few moments ago.


	4. Fragments

**Chapter 4: Fragments**

"I've got you love, you're all right. Do you know where you are?" Delia Llewellyn asked the bedraggled blonde thing she held partially propped up off the ground.

"What's your name sweetheart?"

The girl made an incoherent noise dragging her hand across her face clumsily. Her eyes opened to slits, looking up in the direction of Delia but not focusing. Her skin was damp with sweat, and her hair stuck to her face and neck.

"…. Doctor…" She mumbled, her hand catching onto Delia's shoulder.

"I'm a doctor, darling, don't worry. Can you tell me your name?". The girl made a small strangled cry, before beginning to tremble violently. "Oh God… she's having an attack… CELYN! COME HERE!!"

He sprinted to Delia's side and crouched down next to her and the shaking blonde girl.

"What do you need?" he asked as Delia shifted the girl into his arms.

"Hold her tight, I need to administer a sedative." She hissed, digging in the pocket of her lab coat, before extracting a syringe. Celyn clamped his arms tightly around the slight, wriggling little thing, who made a pained mewling noise as the needle slid into her arm.

The tremors subsided and he felt her completely relax into his arms, groaning quietly as she lost consciousness and rested her head against his chest. He gathered her against him, with one arm under her knees and the other cradling under her arms and carefully rose to his feet. Noting how very little this girl weighed.

Rose ran to where Delia and Celyn stood on the bridge. Stopping, she cast her eyes over the unconscious girl.

"Who is she?" She asked, looking back up at her two team members. Delia shook her head.

"Can't say, couldn't get much out of her before she went into shock. It looks like coming through the rift took quite a toll on her. She's in worse condition then Mr. Cook was when he ended up here."

"Well…" Celyn said dryly. "She's also about an eighth of Mr. Cook's size… she lacked for his padded landing."

"So what should we do then?" Rose asked the two people in front of her. "She's just come through the rift, she could be a valuable source in finding out what's going on here… but if her condition is that bad…" Delia shook her head.

"She'll be fine, we take her back to the hub, and I'll set her up with an IV to combat the hydration she's undergone, run a few tests to make sure there wasn't any real damage done, let her sleep for awhile, and when she's awake she'll be good to answer whatever you want."

"Might want to feed her first though." Celyn remarked, the two women glanced at him. "What? She's awfully trim, she's got to be hungry…" He trailed off, and Rose smiled at him the way you would a rambling five year old before returning her attention to Delia.

"Right, we take her back to the hub then, yeah?"

BREAK

The door to the hub clanged open violently.

"I need your help."

Captain Jack Harkness started slightly at both the noise of the door and the voice, his hands leaving the shoulders of the pretty ginger girl seated in front of him. He turned to the now open door way, the thin man standing in it with his fingers splayed against the steel door frame, panting.

"Funny … We're supposed to have fairly tight security on that door, you know, about twenty different locks to get through and all that…" He said dryly, "But I suppose that wouldn't be enough to stop someone like you Doctor…"

"Moira's gone, Jack" The Doctor practically hissed as he moved to stand directly in front of the captain. Jack folded his arms and arched an eyebrow.

"Who?"

"MOIRA! Twiggy little thing! About this tall! Eats like a horse… She was my date to Martha's wedding! For God's sake man! I practically had to pull you off of her." The Doctor was practically shouting, and waving his arms in animated gestures to demonstrate each point he made. Jack leaned away from him, pursing his lips slightly.

"Wait, wait… it's coming back to me… cute little blonde thing with an Irish accent, right? You weren't kidding, I watched her plow through close to half of the buffet table before I got around to talking to her … but I figured, you know what they say, girl who eats like that is bound to have some other kind of stamina…."

"JACK!" The Doctor looked unsure as to whether he was mortified or simply wanted to strangle the man in front of him.

"Sorry Doc, I didn't think you two were… you know, together. I mean, I know you have a thing for blondes. But you spent most of the wedding being nowhere near her…" The Doctor made a huffing noise and stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat.

"We weren't… it was complicated… it's different now…"

"Hey wait… Martha's wedding was over two hundred years ago!" Jack said indignantly, pulling the Doctor out of his moment of nostalgia.

"What?… Oh, right, it was, technically, but it was only three and a half years ago for us. We went back in time to Martha's wedding, wasn't going to go originally had things … you know… timey wimey… wibbley… wobbley…" He made a vague motion with his hand. And Jack shook his head, he'd known the Doctor long enough to know that if he wasn't reigned in he would spend the next four hours talking about abstract concepts of non-linear time.

"Right… so then Moira… not from the 21st century then. I was wondering why you hadn't just brought Rose."

"Moira's from this century, we've been traveling together for four years now… but she's gone now Jack, and it's my fault. I knew something wasn't right, and I couldn't protect her."

"What happened?"

"The rift took her, that's why I came to you, this organization, when you're not out policing the evil aliens you monitor the rift don't you? You can tell me when it's going to open up again."

"Probably, but…" The Doctor walked forward and grabbed Jack by his shirt collar.

"Listen, I spent nearly two hundred years after Canary Warf... telling myself if I could have stopped that happening to Rose everything would have been different, everything would have been better. Every day I think about that, and regret letting her stay locked in that other universe. I don't know where the rift sent Moira, but I'm not going to let the same thing happen to her. I'm going to find her Jack, now are you going to help me or not?"

Jack calmly removed the Doctor's hands from his shirt and placed them at the shorter man's sides, before patting him lightly on the cheek.

"I'll help, there's no need to get fussy." He told him as he walked back to where the, now rather startled, ginger haired girl sat in front of her computer monitors. Jack smiled fondly down at the girl and rested his hand on her shoulder. "This is Emily, our techie, she's basically a genius"

"I wouldn't say genius…" She said, her gaze flicking up to the Doctor and then to her shoes as the color rose in her cheeks.

"Don't let the modesty fool you Doc, the shy girl thing's all an act, our Em is quite the little vixen, aren't you?" She looked mortified, and the Doctor sighed.

"Jack, if you're done harassing your staff…"

"No, listen, she's got all these brilliant things she can do with a computer that tell us about the rift and its activity, tell him" Jack said, inclining his head to Emily who was still blushing furiously.

"Well, you see…" she began timidly "The rift, it's been pretty much dormant since the early 21st century. Little fluctuations is all… few days ago though, it started really acting up. The Cardiff Bay Barrage…"

"Right! That's where Moira disappeared from!" The Doctor interjected, and Emily nodded patiently before continuing.

"Yes, that's where most of the activity centers, apparently. Your Moira wasn't the only one. Another of our citizens got pulled through the rift, and we had a girl just materialize out of nowhere. And to put it mildly, that's not good. So while we don't know how to close it, per see… I've managed to create a program that monitors the output of energy from the rift and based of that it can predict, roughly, when it will open up again."

"Tell me you have some sort of good news." The Doctor said leaning over Emily's shoulder as she indicated several graphs on her monitor screens. Emily let out a small sighing noise as she brushed a loose strand of hair from her face and looked up at him.

"I'm afraid that it won't open again for at least three days … strangely enough it appears that the activity is starting to recede a bit since the last fluctuation that your Moira was caught in. I'm sorry…" The Doctor frowned, and ruffled his hair.

"That gives us time then." He said, Jack looked skeptically at the Doctor.

"Time for what?"

"Jack, you an I are going to figure out a way to take the TARDIS and go through the rift and get her back."

BREAK

Rose looked at the slightly bedraggled girl, curled up on the couch at Torchwood headquarters.

She was the first person directly involved with the rift that they would be able to actually interview, maybe she could help them understand something about it that they had not been able to glean from their outside studies and observations.

Rose rested her chin on her hands as she scrutinized this strange, strange girl, in her fancy dress, all torn and damp. Who couldn't have been much older then she herself had been when she had begun traveling with the Doctor.

The girl on the couch made a small sniffling noise and slowly opened her eyes, and blinking looked up at Rose with a look of complete uncomprehending.

The girl's look of confusion rapidly changed to something more alike to horror, and with a small squeak she scooted backwards from Rose on the heels of her hands.

"It's all right! It's all right! You're safe!" Rose told her reaching towards the girl, which caused her to recoil further.

"You can't be… you're dead." She whispered. Rose felt an icy throb in the pit of her stomach. This girl's words, the years of wondering why she never aged, how could she know? Who in God's name was this girl?

"You … you know who I am?" The girl nodded, still looking ready to bolt at any minute.

"Look… don't be afraid, all right? I don't know how you know about me… but I'm not a ghost, or a zombie or anything I just … stopped aging… I've been like this since about 2006... But I'm still human, I just … can't die… or get any older. And I promise I won't hurt you." Rose leaned forward, putting a tentative hand on the girl's shoulder. "You're safe, you really are… what's your name?"

The girl relaxed, but still looked a bit wary of Rose as she sat up and smoothed her ruined skirt over her knees.

"Moira Brennan… where am I?"

"This is probably going to sound a little hard to believe, but you're in Cardiff … just not your Cardiff, it's parallel to your world. It's mostly the same but, with slight differences. Like maybe certain historical events did or didn't happen, people were or weren't born, movies didn't get made or did…. And Zeppelins… you probably didn't notice, but this world has a lot of Zeppelins, has for centuries now, really." Rose motioned at her surroundings. "And this, is Torchwood.".

Celyn made his way into the main room of the hub, balancing a tray laden with tea cups, and closely followed by Delia who was carrying a semi-large shopping bag. Celyn smiled at Moira as he placed the tray down on the low table beside her and Rose.

"Welcome back Sleeping Beauty" he said handing her one of the cups of tea that she accepted with a grateful smile. Delia knelt down next to Moira and opened the shopping bag.

"Your clothes got a bit ruined when you came through the rift, so I got you a new change, it's not much since I wasn't sure what size you were. But tomorrow if you're up to it, I can take you out shopping for some new clothes if you want, would you like that?"

Moira's eyebrow shot up in a critical expression of Delia's tone, and Celyn sighed heavily.

"For God's sake, she's not five." He told the brunette exasperatedly, and a flush rose in Delia's cheeks as she cast an annoyed glance in his direction.

"Don't worry yourself over it Delia, Moira and I can go out later, catch up yeah?" Rose said, smiling warmly at Moira, whose lips twitched slightly in an attempt to smile.

"That would be lovely thank you." Moira said, with no real inflection in her voice. Rose frowned only momentarily, not long enough for anyone else to see it. There was something slightly odd about Moira that she couldn't put her finger on.

Who was this girl? And why did she know about her? What else did she know? And when she had first seen Rose, why was her reaction seemingly more dismay and despair then real fear. She resisted the urge to grab this girl by the shoulders and shake her violently screaming "JUST WHO THE HELL ARE YOU??". Instead she smiled.

"We'll need to get you a place to stay…"

"Stay?" Moira asked… "But… I can't stay, I need to go back, I have this friend, you see, and he'll be looking for me." Rose frowned, for as dismayed as she was by the strange girl, she _ did _feel bad for her.

"That's a problem, no one has ever willingly gone into the rift, we would have no way of knowing where you would end up, and plus ever since you came through the energy from the rift has gotten weaker, we have no idea when it will open up again." Rose told her, putting a hand lightly on Moira's shoulder. Moira took a deep breath and looked up at her, resigned, dropping her apparent wariness that she has had since first seeing Rose.

"But what should I do?"

"I have an extra room… you could stay with me" Celyn said over his cup of tea. Rose felt slight relieved, it was obvious that Moira felt comfortable around Celyn, maybe staying with him she would tell him something. Although Rose had hoped to gain information from her herself. But nothing made a girl relax and open up quite like a day of shopping, and Rose's own wardrobe could use an update, her trainers were nearly worn through and her sweater's time had quietly clearly come and gone long ago.

"Thank you." Moira mumbled into her tea cup, and Rose placed an affectionate pat on her head, and was rewarded with a small smile. Maybe she wasn't so bad after all, she was just a lost kid. And Rose had been just a lost kid in a strange universe herself once a long time ago.

BREAK

He stretched his limbs out languorously, he could feel the moonlight on his bare arms and he relished in it.

It had been years since he had stood with the air against his skin, on his own two feet.

The pained whispers of the girl's mind, and the banging drum beat sound of her heart rang through his brain.

And even now he could hear the jumble of her thoughts, even this far from her. The girl all steel on the outside and glass on the inside, the girl with a dead lover's name inked into the skin of her lower back, and enough hurt in her past to feed him and inspire him for the years that he waited in the dark and the silence, waiting.

But he could smell her, she was here too. This city, this world, was writhing with opportunity, he would own this world, and then he would find her.

And to show her how grateful her was for all she had done for him, she could watch it fall to pieces with him.


	5. The Catalyst

**Chapter 5: The catalyst**

* * *

The Doctor yawned animatedly as he rolled to his side, drawing the bed sheets up over his shoulders. The TARDIS hummed soothingly, and he stretched his arm across to the left side of the bed, opening his eyes with a frown when he realized that it had been vacant for some time now. He started slightly, there was a sound of bare feet against the floors of the ship, preceding the door to the bedroom swinging open. And he gasped and vaulted out of bed.

He was at the door in a manner of seconds, pulling the girl roughly to him as he wrapped his arms tightly around her and breathed in the soft scent of her hair.

"Good Lord, but you're in a mood this morning." She gasped. "You do realize it's nearly impossible for me to breath, yes?" He loosened his death grip of a bear hug and pressed a soft kiss to her kittenish mouth.

"Sorry, sorry." He told her, and Moira let out one of her quiet laughs before gently freeing herself from the tangle of his arms.

"I thought you were going to sleep forever, you knocked your head quite good back on the barrage. And let me tell you mister, it was no easy task for me to bring you back here all by myself." The Doctor eyed Moira's thin frame as she placed her hands on her hips in a gesture of mock annoyance.

"All by yourself?"

"Well, I didn't really think you would have approved of me getting someone's help, and therefore allowing some stranger into the TARDIS, so I dragged you back here, all on my own." She said, and with a nonchalant flip of her hair turned her back to him, sauntered over to the wardrobe, and began pawing for shoes. "So what is with the welcome, not that it bothers me, mind you, but you act like you thought you'd never see me again."

The Doctor frowned and seated himself on the edge of the bed.

"It was just the horrible dream that I'd had." He told her.

"Oh yes? About what, then?"

"You'd… well… gone."

"Well that's just silly." She said, but her voice sounded different, familiar, but not belonging to Moira. But as she got to her feet, it was Rose who turned to face him and said "You're the one who always leaves, Doctor."

He awoke for real this time, on a leather coach in Cardiff, breathing heavily and covered in a cold sweat.

Emily stood over him with a hand lightly pushing against his shoulder.

"Doctor! Doctor! Listen! Something's happening!"

He shifted to a sitting position and looked up at her. Jack stood a pace or two behind her, arms crossed and eyeing the hub's view screens with gravity.

"What is it?" he asked as he pawed into the deep pockets of his trench coat, seeking out his thick black spectacles. Emily straightened and in two quick steps stood beside Jack, tilting a view screen into the Doctor's line of sight.

Bright lines and vibrations etched violently across the screen, and the Doctor frowned. Quickly clambering to his feet he inspected the screen, resting his palm against it as his eyes followed the movements and numeric calculations along the sides.

"The rift…." He said under his breath. "Does this mean…?". Emily nodded.

"It's opening within the hour…"

She hadn't completed the sentence before he had turned and ran for the exit.

_

* * *

  
_

Rose browsed through racks of dresses with little more the mild interest. They were lovely little things, but not what she would generally consider wearing anywhere unless she was meant to have dinner with the president. However, it had become painfully obvious when Celyn had brought Moira in to the hub that morning just how incredibly ill-fitting the clothes Delia had selected for her truly were.

And judging from the kind of attire she had been in when they found her, Rose shouldn't have been surprised that she would be drawn to a shop like this. A viewing screen was affixed to the wall nearest the cash register. A mid-day talk show was on and two women were animatedly discussing Britain's new president who had been inaugurated the week before. Pictures of a smiling, confident looking man in a expensive suit were shown behind the women as they spoke of his declared that he MUST be the most attractive president they had ever had. Rose herself, while conceding that he was, in fact, quite good looking, knew and cared little about his politics. She realized that she actually knew nearly nothing about him at all, aside from him starting out in a robotic security firm before rising to power.

Operating outside the government, as it was, with TORCHWOOD, she didn't often need to know much about the politicians, for they had little to no influence on her work, aside from when they occasionally got in the way.

Taking a break from her half-hearted rummaging, Rose took a seat outside the changing booth that Moira was trying clothes on in. And started slightly when the girl inside said her name.

"Umm, yes?" Rose replied, more then slightly surprised. While Moira was most definitely in better spirits today, she was still not what one might consider chatty, and she had still seemed a bit uncertain around Rose herself.

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for how I acted before. I must have come off as very rude, it's just that… well, you just reminded me so much of someone, and it caught me off guard."

"It's all right, you were a bit disoriented is all, I mean, coming through the rift was bound to be pretty taxing. It's amazing you weren't, I don't know, mad." There was a quiet laugh from behind the door at this.

"Do you remember, I said that I had a friend that I had been traveling with?"

"You said you were traveling with a man, is he your boyfriend?" There was a deep sigh on the other side of the door at that.

"No… yes… well, I don't know, maybe." Moira pushed the door open and emerged from the cubicle in a light peach dress, with a wide full skirt. She arranged the yards of material about her legs as she sat lightly next to Rose.

"It's a bit complicated, me and him. I love him to death though. He had this girl a while ago, you see, he loved her more then anything. I guess you could say it was a bit of a bad breakup they had, but he never stopped loving her. Even when he's with me I know he still thinks about her." She tilted her head thoughtfully, regarding Rose. "You look quite like her, gave me a bit of a scare."

Moira smiled wryly and looked down at the floor before continuing.

"The reason I wanted to get back to him so bad was there's been a bit of a problem. This girl, this girl who he still loves no matter what he says, is coming back into town. Oh, he doesn't know about it yet, but I just know that when he does, if he thinks there's even the smallest possibility she would want to get back with him even a fraction of how badly he wants to get back together with her, then that'll be the end of it. I… just wanted to see him one last time before there's no place for me in his world anymore."

Rose blinked at the girl next to her.

"So what, you think he'd just leave you then? Him and this girl split up a while ago, yeah? Why would he rather live in his past then with you?"

Moira shook her head.

"I don't blame him. I really don't. She was the bleeding love of his life. The fact that we had both experienced that kind of loss is I think part of what brought us together in the first place. A couple of lost dogs who life had kicked in the face. I don't expect him to settle for what he has with me if he has an opportunity to have that kind of love again. The only problem is, since she's his whole world, with her back in it I won't exist in his eyes anymore."

Rose frowned.

"You sound like he'd just completely forget you ever existed if she came back into the picture."

"Let's put it this way. If he were to enter a room, and me and her were standing right next to each other, he wouldn't even see me. It would be like I wasn't there at all." She took in heavy breath before forcing a smile on her face as she turned to Rose. "But enough of that, I just wanted to clear up any bad feelings there might be between us…. Now there was a lovely dress in the front of the shop that would look simply stunning on you." Moira told Rose, as she led the other girl to the front of the boutique.

* * *

It wasn't so much her scent that he caught, though he would know it anywhere, even mixed as it was with the smells of this new world he had never been to. It was a new dimension, fresh from anyone who had ever known him, a safe harbour, a new kingdom to over through, thanks to her.

It wasn't her scent.

It was the sound of her drumming heart beat that called him.

The rhythm that had been the first noise he had been aware when he stirred himself into consciousness. Then slowly, like layers of sand filtering through an hour glass, he had heard the panicky whispers inside her brain on top of the sounds of her beating heart.

And he had bid his time, waiting and growing stronger.

At night, when she dreamed of old wounds and newer insecurities he would slip inside of her dreams.

He would whisper soothingly to her, because her dreams were the only place that he could speak to her in his condition. Every night he would hold her dream self and promise her that one day he would find her. Her dream lover that upon waking she would always assume to be a concoction of her subconscious.

A product of her anxieties, and the undercurrent of loneliness she would not admit to feeling in her every day life.

But now he was free, no longer a prison to the realm of dreams, and fretful minds.

He regarded his form in the mirror before him.

Without any vanity he analyzed himself and new that he was beyond what would simply be called handsome. It was good. He wanted to look his best. It was part of the plan.

The fairy tale was beginning to unfold as he knew it would, if not somewhat un-formulaically. The key players were all in place.

The Woodsmen would enter the forest in search of Red Riding Hood, but choose instead the Bad Wolf. As had happened in so many of her dreams. She would stand wide-eyed and forsaken, clutching to her basket. Then what would become of Red? Alone and lost in the unfamiliar woods. And then he would enter, and she would follow him blindly, unknowing that of all the woodland creatures, he was what she should fear the most.

* * *

As they walked back towards the hub, each carrying multiple shopping bags, both of them glanced up at the darkening sky. There were distant rumblings and small drops of precipitation already beginning to present themselves. The storm was on its way, and it looked to be a rather large one.

Rose frowned as a large rain droplet bounced against her upturned cheek, and she brushed it away with a small sound of annoyance. Moira frowned and rooted around in one of her shopping bags. When she finally found the object of her desire she popped off the price labels and shrugged into her new deep cranberry colored coat, as Rose pulled up the hood of her own deep blue trench against the oncoming rain.

Rose considered suggesting that they run the remaining distance to the hub, but after eyeing her companions new and impractical, if not attractive footwear, she decided this would be a ridiculous idea.

"We should run unless we want our things to get ruined." Moira said, pulling up her own hood. Rose blinked.

"Can you…?" She asked, indicating the troublesome shoes in question, a concoction of stiletto heels and laces. Moira smiled and shifted her bags to her left hand, extending her right to Rose.

"I can keep up, I promise." She told her, and Rose couldn't resist smiling back as she took the other blonde's hand and they ran across the wet Cardiff pavement towards the TORCHWOOD base.

It was odd how running through the rain with someone she barely even knew made her feel young and alive in a way that she hadn't in decades. The nearly forgotten sound of her own appreciative laugh resonated among the echoes of rain fall and heels on pavement.

But as they neared the hub there was another sound in the damp air as well. Another sound that Rose had nearly forgotten, that she hadn't heard in so long that at first she couldn't even identify it beyond knowing that it had belonged to the life she had lived long ago.

It sounded close, mere meters away. A harsh whining sound of un-oiled machinery grinding against itself that grew steadily louder. Moira's hand came lose of hers as the other girl violently came to a stop.

Rose glanced at her, Moira's expression was a mixture of too many emotions to be easily labeled. Joy, sorrow, desperation, and fear all struggling for dominance on her features.

"It's over." Moira whispered. Rose thought to ask her what she meant by that before the noise became deafeningly loud and a nearly blinding light began to form a short distance in front of them.

* * *

Jumping through a hole in the very fabric of time and space was always a violent affair. Rips in the walls of dimensions were a thing not supposed to exist, and it was as if they wanted anyone who passed through their membrane to understand the gravity of that wrongness.

The Doctor let out a small groan and rubbed the back of his head, he slowly peeled himself off of the TARDIS floor where he had been thrown after the violent impact of the landing. Jack had fared better then him, and had managed to grab onto the console and remain standing.

"Are you sure this worked Doc? I mean, how certain are you that the rift would only go to one place and that we haven't ended up in some strange Hell dimension or something.?".

The Doctor straightened his clothing and ran a hand through his hair.

"Not certain at all, but you know, a man's got to do… and what have you." He said with an absent hand gesture. "Now let's find out". It took only a few strides of his long legs to cross to the TARDIS door and fling it open.

He stepped onto the wet pavement and peered around him at the near mirror image of the Cardiff he had just left and the looming storm clouds overhead. He sucked in his breath to release a sigh of annoyance, when it caught in his throat all together.

There was no rain, no Cardiff, no TARDIS, or Jack, or anything at all about him. What there was, was a figure in a blue trench coat standing only a short ways a way.

Everything surrounding her had blurred into the background as she pushed back the hood of her coat, her blonde hair falling about her shoulders, and her wide eyes mimicking his own look of disbelief.

Without any further prompting he was running towards her and she towards him. Every step drawing him closer to this beautiful vision from long ago. When they closed the distance he caught her in his arms and pulled her tight against him, an arm encircling her waist and a hand caught in her thick hair.

She smelled exactly as he had remembered her, the soft scent of flowers and sunshine clung to her skin and hair as he pressed his lips against her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids, before capturing her mouth with his own. She clung to him with equal intensity and it was as if they had always been this way.

There had been no mistakes, no goodbyes, everything was as it should have always been. Him and his Rose, and time would stand still in reverence of their reunion.

When their lips finally parted, breathlessly, he cradled her face between his hands looking deep into her eyes.

"How is it possible?" He whispered. "Rose, you haven't aged a day since I last saw you." She let out a small laugh, blinking away tears.

"The TARDIS, the time vortex, it didn't all leave. I've been this way for centuries… you, the other you… the wasn't you… he figured it out. Oh God, I watched him get old and wither away! And I thought that the day he died that I had lost everything of you!" She buried her face against his chest and wrapped her arms tightly around his thin waist.

He would have stayed happily that way forever if not for the hand that tapped him on the shoulder just then. Blinking, he turned and looked at Jack, as if just remembering that the other man was there.

"I hate to break this up, and it's marvelous to see you Rose. It really is. But remember Moira? I seem to remember you needing to bust us through time and space to save her?"

The Doctor looked at him without comprehension for a moment before recognition dawned on him.

"MOIRA!" He exclaimed, and looked back at Rose who looked simply shocked.

"Moira? Moira Brennan? You're looking for her? She's right over…." Rose turned to indicate the area where she had previously been standing.

Only the street was empty aside from the three of them.

* * *

The rain had begun to fall heavier as strode down the darkened, streets. His umbrella obscured his face from passersby as he turned down a small side street. The drumming sound in his brain led him to a small pub off the beaten roads.

It was fairly dark inside, the minimal lighting casting a sort of dim and unhealthy looking orange tint on the inhabitants. He closed his umbrella and took off his hat as he entered. There was the possibility that someone would recognize him, but it was dark, and they would tell themselves that it was a trick of the light. After all, why would someone as important as himself be in a tiny pub in Cardiff.

He passed through the room, following the sound in his head and absently trailing his fingers across the felt of pool tables and the tops of chair backs. Until he saw her, tucked into a booth near the back. The darkest, and most isolated, seat in the house. Her head bent over the bottle her pale hands clutched atop the table, and her hair hanging in such a way as to obscure her face.

It didn't matter. Deaf and blind he would have known it was her, and a smile crept across his lips as he stood over her.

"Hello, Little Red."

The girl visibly started, and her head snapped up, green eyes widening in a sort of stunned recognition.

"It's you…" She breathed.

"It's me." He said, seating himself across from her and reaching his hand out to touch her face.

"But … you can't be real…I dreamed you!". He nodded, a look of sympathy on his face.

"You did, but I am. I'm here because of you … didn't I tell you that I would find you?"

"Yes… but that was a dream. I mean … you're real? I don't even know what to call you."

He smiled and affectionately trailed his hand a long her cheek.

"Yes you do. You've called me by it a thousand times." He told her as his thumb traced along the swell of her lower lip.

"Master…" She whispered.


	6. Fractured Fairytales

**Chapter 6: Fractured Fairytales**

They had no idea where she would have gone. At the TORCHWOOD hub they researched and inputted every location the Doctor could think of that she might have gone to. There wasn't anything. There weren't even parallel dimension versions of her family to try and contact.

At a loss for what to do, it was Jack who finally suggested that Rose and the Doctor call at a night, and that he would stay at the hub with Celyn and Delia and continue researching.

"We'll call if we find her." Jack had assured him, before he had all but thrust the Doctor and Rose out the door, and returning to where Celyn stood, making a remark about what a striking resemblance he had to someone Jack had known a few centuries ago.

The Doctor soaked in the details of Rose's flat as she clattered around in the small kitchen. Walking through the living room he ghosted his fingers across the top of the mantle, inspecting the pictures until stopping at one in particular that he picked up for closer examination.

A wedding picture, that appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be of him and Rose. He found it odd the effect the photograph had on him.

How different would his life have been if he hadn't left Rose on the beach with the product of himself and Donna? He could see that maybe domestics weren't nearly as ghastly as he had always protested them to be.

He set the picture back on the mantle, almost guiltily, as Rose entered the living room, bumping the swinging door from the kitchen open with her hip and holding two cups of tea.

"You still take two sugars, yeh?" She asked with an awkward half smile. He nodded and they sat down next to each other on the couch. And the silence in the room was almost tangible.

How would you begin to speak to someone you hadn't seen in over one hundred years?

It was Rose who finally broke the awkward silence.

"Why did you leave?" She asked, staring into the bottom of her tea cup. The Doctor started.

"What?"

"You left. You left me, a y'never even asked what I wanted. And he wasn't you. I learned to love him, but he wasn't you. Not really, anyway."

"But… you married him…."

"He… wasn't…. you!" She said between gritted teeth, brushing tears away angrily with the heel of her hand. "He could never be you, and we both knew it. We made the best of it, but it was _always_ you."

"I'm sorry." He said quietly.

"Yeah, you're sorry, you're always sorry Doctor." She said under her breath as she clambered to her feet and crossed to the other side of the room. She hastily plunked her tea cup onto the mantle and stood motionless with her back to him, trying to collect her thoughts and feelings into something even remotely coherent.

The Doctor sat with his mouth slightly agape in the after math of Rose's outburst, finding no reply at the ready. It was not as if the words she said were not ones that had not echoed within his own mind over and over throughout the years since he had last seen her.

He knew that she had every rite to blame him, by that token, she had every rite to never wish to speak to him again.

But she had spoken to him, even if she was now cross with him, and he had to do something, say something, say _anything_. His forehead creased in a slight frown as he set his tea cup on the short end table beside the sofa and got to his feet, moving to stand beside Rose in only a few strides. He reached a tentative hand towards her, letting it hang momentarily in the air before coming to rest lightly against her cheek.

"You should be mad, you should hate me…" She turned her head towards him as he spoke. "But I need you to believe me, that from the second that I left you on that beach, till I was standing her with you, right now … every moment I wish I could have it to do over. There was never a day that I didn't think of you, and regretted never telling you."

Rose tilted her head slightly, regarding him.

"Telling me what, Doctor? Or does it still not need saying?"

She felt a small twinge of guilt at the look that crossed his face at that, not enough to offer an apology however. Why, she had hurtled through time and space, the very fabrics of dimensions, with only the hope of finding him driving her forward.

She lost track of the times she'd nearly been killed, the hostile alternate worlds she stumbled blindly into. But somehow she'd done it, and she done it all for him.

And then he had put her back exactly where she'd come from and not even been able to say three small words to her. It didn't matter that had been centuries since the incident, the sting of it was as fresh as a new paper cut, and she could feel the bitter tears brimming in her eyes.

"I'm sorry…" He found himself saying again, feeling defeated in the face of her pained expression.

"How could you have even asked me if it needed saying? Of course it did! If you felt it all it should have been easy for you! I didn't find it hard. Do you know how hard it was to find you? Do you? And then for it to be all for nothing?". She hated that she was crying, it wasn't how she had planned for it to go. She buried her face against her palms, feeling ashamed of her emotions. The Doctor lightly pulled her hands away and cupped her face in his hands, tipping it up to him he lightly kissed her eyelids and down the side of her cheek. He stopped with his lips hovering mere centimeters above her ear and whispered.

"Rose Tyler, I have always loved you."

He kissed her then, not with the desperation of when they had first been reunited, but in the deep and passionate way he has always wished he'd had the courage to. And Rose eagerly returned his affections, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body firmly against his. His arms tightly encircled her waist and he pulled her hips flush against him. After what seemed like years they broke apart from each other, gasping for air and breathing heavily.

Rose smoothed back her hair and licked her lips, regarding the Doctor with a look in her eye that reminded him, with slight discomfort, of when he her body had been taken over by Cassandra on New Earth. After a moment she grabbed his hand and pulled him deeper into the flat, and he followed wordlessly, with a sort of awed obedience.

She pushed open the door to another room, and the Doctor had only a moment to look about him at his surroundings, what he assumed to be Rose's bedroom, before she was once more kissing him. He felt for a moment, almost like he would melt under the heat of her lips, and her fingers were so nimble, undoing buttons, working lose the knot of his tie, undressing him with a mind boggling quickness. He felt it completely impossible for his brain to fully take in the situation, let alone keep up with it. He barely realized that she had been guiding him backwards until the backs of his knees met with edge of the mattress, buckled, and he found himself involuntarily seated.

Rose's mouth never left his, however, and she slid onto his lap, straddling him. She broke the kiss only to begin to tug up at her own top, and the Doctor managed to finally acclimate to the situation and grab her shirt, and pull it cleanly up over her head and her up stretched arms.

It happened fast, much more so then either of them had expected, mere moments later both were unclothed and moving in union. He kissed every inch of her skin that he could without disrupting their movement as she purred his name. It was as if there had never been any separation, it had always been this way, the Doctor and Rose, together, and all way right in the universe. And when he climaxed he held tightly onto her and told her again that he loved her in almost a whimper.

He fell asleep in a tangle of sheets, and limbs, and blonde hair pressing against his face.

===== BREAK =====

He put an arm around her waist as she stumbled slightly exiting the pub. The Master regarded Moira and wondered how much she'd had to drink before he'd found her, she'd spoken with perfect coherence, so perhaps the small wobble of her step just then had been pure coincidence. Unsure footing in dim lighting, and what have you.

The rain had started up once more, and while he, himself, was unbothered by it, he stopped and turned to his companion, pulling her crimson hood up to cover head, before extending his hand to her.

"Come on, Little Red." He said, a gentle teasing tone to his voice, and she accepted his hand without comment, letting him lace his fingers through hers and lead her down the rain soaked streets. "My chauffer will be waiting for us a few blocks from here." He explained to her and she nodded.

They walked awhile in silence before passing the window of small appliance type store, the view screens displayed in the window broad casting the local news. Moira moved to the display window and stood with the palm of her hand against the glass, carefully regarding the news cast.

"New President, Harold Saxon, has already begun to act on his platforms which promise to bring Britain into a new golden age…" Came the faint voice of the news caster through the glass. Moira frowned.

"That's you. You're the president here." She said looking at him quizzically. The Master smiled winsomely and moved to stand next to her, casually draping an arm around her shoulders. "… Harold Saxon?" She asked after a moment.

"You've been to places before with the Doctor, I assume, where he's used a pseudonym to avoid suspicion I'm sure. If I remember correctly, he favours John Smith." Moira gave a small nod. "Harold Saxon has been a personal favourite of mine, but of course, with you pet, Harry is fine."

"Harry…" She said slowly and he grinned at her.

"That's my girl!" He said, and pressed a kiss to her forehead before once more taking her by the hand and leading her away from the store front.

At the end of a few blocks they found a man in a newly pressed suit, standing in front of a well polished transport ship.

"The lady have a bit of a hard night?" The man asked, and the Master smiled, giving Moira a squeeze.

"You know how it is, Hen party got to be a bit much." The driver nodded sympathetically.

"All the same, if you don't mind me saying so 'mum. You're a lucky woman, if my Misses had called me out 'ere in the middle of the night, I'd of told her to find her own way home. Your fiancé is a better man than me, I'm afraid." He said with a chuckle as he lowered the short flight of steps into the cabin.

The Master was pleased that Moira had not so much as blinked at the driver's statement, and had only given him a small smile. He gently nudged her to climb up into the ship and followed her up the steps.

Once they were both seated in the cabin, the driver slid into the front of the ship, behind the control console and set about pressing the correct controls to seal the cabin and set the ship in flight.

"Where are we going?" Moira asked quietly enough that only he could hear.

"London."

===== BREAK=====

When the ship landed outside of the large mansion the Master gave Moira's hand a small squeeze, and she awoke with a small yawn and looked about her as the cabin doors were opened.

Once inside he helped her struggle out of her damp coat, handing it off to one of the household staff he lead her up the grand staircase, all the while watching her eyes attempt to absorb the luxury around her.

He led her down the hall and into a large room, with floor to ceiling windows and an enormous four poster bed. He released her hand and observed as she wandered into the room, trailing a hand over the top of the vanity and a chest of drawers before turning back to look at him.

"It's yours, if you want it." He told her, and she tilted her head questioningly.

"Why? Why go through all this for me? " She said, with a gesture to her surroundings. "It just … doesn't make sense". He crossed to where she was standing, smoothing a stray hair from her forehead.

"We'll just say that I owe you a lot."

"What?" It was almost more of a statement, and it made him smile, and evade it entirely, focusing on his hand that was still at her hair.

"He didn't deserve you, you know." He told her, and she looked shocked, almost violently so, like being woken up by having cold water thrown on you. He enjoyed the look of shock on her face, and he grinned disarmingly at her. "He took you for granted you know, always made you play second fiddle to that little 21st century shop girl of his. You deserve better." He leaned down, his cheek pressed against hers "I can give you better."

She took a step backwards, and shook her head to clear it.

"I don't blame him, she's the love of his life. Besides I can't really compare to her."

"Oh? And why is that?" He asked, still smiling in a way he knew she found charming.

"Well, you can't really match up to someone who absorbed the whole vortex of time and space, and can, you know, live forever. Compared to that, I'm more then a bit insignificant" She said with a small, humourless laugh.

"You'd be surprised the things you've done without even realizing it. You could hardly be called insignificant." He advanced slightly, compensating for the step she had taken. She didn't move again, instead, she was completely still, her eyes fixed on him. He felt almost like a snake, hypnotizing a mouse it was about to devour. "Why should you be so upset over him? What is it? Attraction? Affection? I do know for a fact, that you are not exactly apathetic in regards to me."

A blush rose in her cheeks and she smiled, a little awkwardly, at that.

"Well, yes, but you do realize that up until a few hours ago I assumed you were a figment of my imagination."

"You should never assume, pet." He told her, moving closer still. Observing the effect that his drawing nearer was having on her. The slight dilation of her pupils, the quickening of her breath, he could clearly hear the tempo of her heartbeat. He'd been intune with her mind long enough to know, clearly, what she was thinking behind her increasingly wide eyes. He found himself enjoying the predatory feeling, finally standing face to face with her, he wanted nothing more then to drag her down like a gazelle. Claim her.

"If you meant so little, do you think I would have done all this to find you?" He moved closer still. "You called me here Moira. You knew. You always knew that this was where your fairy tale was going. He was never going to play the Prince, you were never going to recover the glass slipper. That's not how it's going to end."

"There are no fairy tale endings." She whispered.

"No… there aren't" He said, and pulled her roughly to him, closing the remaining distance between them. He kissed her hard, and much too quickly for her to process. The blunt force of it caused her bottom lip to become cut on her teeth, and when she managed to open her mouth to him he could taste the salty, metallic notes of blood. This did nothing to help the purely animalistic sensations he was feeling.

There was nothing soft, or romantic in the way he pushed her onto the bed. This was entirely about possession. His dull nails scraped shallow tracks up her thigh as he roughly pushed her skirt up over her hips. The fabric of her dress making a sharp hissing noise as it ripped under the force of his hands, matched by her soft cry as he bit down where her neck met her shoulder. He wondered momentarily how many bruises she would have in the morning.

Moving over her, his left hand gripped her thin wrists above her head while his right pressed against the side of her temple, and he simultaneously entered her mentally as well as physically. He was instantly aware as he rummaged through the haphazard maze-like domain that was Moira's mind, that the Doctor had never once set foot there in all the time he'd been with her. The Master felt oddly giddy at the fact that he held a complete claim over something that previously belonged to the Doctor, she belonged to him even more so now. He foraged into the corners and recesses of her brain that he hadn't previously had access to.

Rooms filled with Ireland, and orphans, and her childhood. But more so, there were rooms filled with the Doctor. The places they'd gone, things that they had done and seen. The secrets he had told her. The knowledge, for the Master, is just as gratifying as the sex. He finally released his hold on her wrists and her mind, instead gripping onto her shoulders hard enough that he can feel his nails breaking the skin there. She moved her hands between the two of them, resting her palms against his chest, and between gasps she whispered:

"You have two hearts."

"Time Lord" He growled and nipped at her neck as they came simultaneously.

====BREAK===

Rose's first thought upon waking was a somewhat panicky one. Having lived alone as long as she had, the sensation of waking up to someone lying on top of her had become incredibly foreign. But she craned her neck slightly, and recognized the messy, albeit, fantastic brown hair, and the face below it. He was still asleep, with his mouth slightly open. She found it completely endearing.

Despite herself, she reached a hand out to touch the side of his face, assuring herself that he was real, not another dream, not simply going to evaporate with the chirps of her alarm clock. His eyes opened slowly, and a childish grin spread across his face and he kissed her lips lightly.

"Good Morning" he said, and Rose laughed, shoving him off of her.

"You've got morning breath, Doctor."

"Oi!" He exclaimed looking offended, she apologized and snuggled against him. She had missed him, the way smelled, the way he looked first thing in the morning. Pale, and skinny, and disarmingly handsome as he had been the last time she'd seen him. She was happy that he was the same, right down to dusting of freckles across his face and that old pinstriped suit. She thought that one day she should ask him, how, exactly, in two centuries, it had not fallen apart.

"Where do you think she went?" Rose asked quietly, and the Doctor shook his head, or as close to as he could while lying down.

"I have no idea, this may be parallel, but this isn't her world. It's different, even if only slightly, it's enough that it wouldn't be familiar. I don't know, maybe I'm being vain, but I never really supposed she would just you know, up and leave." Rose sighed at him.

"Oh for goodness sake, would you stay after you saw us? You must've known how she felt about you… I think she knew this was going to happen." He raised an eyebrow.

"How would she have known?"

"Dunno, just something she said when we were out. Was all a bit cryptic at the time … but it all sort of makes sense now." She sat up, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. "What's going to happen now? I mean, if we can find her, and after that?"

"What are you wanting to happen?" He asked with his manic grin, nudging her leg playfully with his foot. "Back to the way things were? Rose Tyler and The Doctor in the TARDIS?" She couldn't help but smile back at him, slightly biting down on her lower lip. She prepared to settle back into bed when the room was filled with the lights and noises of her communication device going off.

Rose sighed heavily and switched it on.

"Yes?"

"Sorry to interupt you crazy kids but we've found something down here." Said Jack's voice through the instrument. The Doctor sat up in bed, moving to sit with an arm draped over Rose's shoulder, and peering at the device.

"What is it?" He asked.

"You should really come down and see for yourself." Jack said, and the communication channel closed with a snap.


End file.
